We haven't gone away

Responding to
Mike Bygrave's Observer investigation,
Guy Taylor, a spokesman for Globalise Resistance, says that the protest movement has achieved much in a short time and that its diversity will continue to be a strength, not a weakness

The Anti-Capitalist movement is the largest social movement in world history. The participants have come from almost every country in the world, and the fact that the G8 look for more and more isolated places to meet shows the geographic extent of the protest movement.

In any movement of such magnitude (indeed in any social movement) there are a number of differing ideologies and analyses of where we are and where we should be going. For what it's worth here are my brief impressions of the current situation:

With any broad movement, the aims and goals are numerous and varied. Certainly concrete demands such as the cancellation of debt, the end to war and the prioritsing of people's lives and livlihoods over the pursuit of profit are as clear as the best ideas, but I feel cannot be achieved under a capitalist system.

We should be very pleased with progress so far. Anti-Capitalism is a young movement and has a huge profile and a good deal on impact. This new movement coerces activists to generalise politically from the issues they first get interested in and to look at the totality of capitalism and links between the different issues. I am keen to stick with the name of "anti-capitalism" as it points the finger at where the problem lies, in the system rather than with particularly nasty individuals or corporations (although these do very much exist).

The movement thus far has made very few significant mistakes, considering it's size and age. Governments, global institutions and mainstream parties will find it impossible to adapt and co-opt anti-capitalism as the central ideas (opposition to profit, neo-liberalism and war) lie in direct contradistinction to the ideology of those institutions, through custom of constitution.

The protests which in the past have put us in the media spotlight are, more often than not, a brilliant arena for networking and introducing people to the ideals of the movement. There has been criticism of 'summit-hopping' I think the protests must continue, whilst realising that demonstrations are a part of the movement, not the be all and end all.

After Seattle and a partial success in Prague, the idea of stopping a summit has become a fetish for some in the movement, but an impossiblity on the streets given the amount of police and military hardware deployed during international meetings. But the demonstrations have not stopped; they have grown. Those in Barcelona and Seville saw over 400,000 and 150,000 people on them respectively, far larger than earlier European protests at Gothenburg and Brussels. The Seville protests were markedly different, there was a national general strike to herald the start of the summit. The general strike did suceed in holding up the start of the summit by a short while, with no confrontation, no arrests and no spectacular tear gas images for the pages of the press. More successful protests and with more people involved - and yet no coverage. We could equally ask, Where Have All The Journalists Gone?

Contrary to received wisdom in the press, the impact of September 11 and the ensuing war on Afghanistan, and soon Iraq, has been to strengthen the anti-capitalist movement. Tackling the subject of US military imperialism alongside economic imperialism has deepened people's understanding of capitalism. It has also attracted thousands of new activists, we now have many Muslim anti-capitalists.

Debate within the movement has been a constant feature, and a strength of the movement. Every protest has been allied with a counter-summit or similar. The web-based discussions are seemingly endless. In Europe the main focus of our activity now is preparation for the European Social Forum, an event that will help shape the movement over the coming year and debate alternatives to the neo-liberal, military world we are opposing. As I have argued, the alliance with the labour movement is a vital part of the development of the movement.

We must now work to ensure that the debates of the movement are taken into the mainstream. Journalists should be encouraged to come along to the ESF, activists should be engaging others in the discussions, through family friends and work.

There are no boundaries to the issues we should be talking about and mobilising over, anti-capitalism means tackling all the problems of the system. The impact of the neo-liberal agenda is not specific to developing countries, it hits ordinary people across the planet. That is why the anti-capitalist movement is so widespread, and this must be remembered when we take political or tactical decisions.

The Observer website carries additional online commentary each week, responding to recent pieces to continue the debate and offering additional coverage of the major issues. See Observer Comment and Observer Worldview for this week's pieces. Follow this link for details of how to offer a piece. The Observer's online commentaries are also trailed in the print pages of the newspaper.